Contradictus Totalus

Contradictus Totalus - Chapter Twelve

Relativity: the stuff that Albert Einstein studied.

What Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy knew about 'E equals mc squared' could have been stuffed into a thimble with room to spare. However, it was at this moment where they really experienced how painful and cruel the laws of relativity were.

Relativity was more than some abstract equation. It was the bending of logic, of reality. It was knowing that the little glowing blue seed that served literally as a portal between life and death was only fifty metres away; but when push came to shove, it was feeling as though it was on the other side of the world. A goal completely impossible to attain.

Fifty metres away from the Portkey. What was fifty metres?

The briefest of looks was shared between Hermione and Malfoy. Then they broke into a hard sprint. They didn't dare look back, only concentrating on breaking through the stifling wall of smoke.

Forty-five metres.

Hermione's mind flew to the Daily Prophet article she had read only yesterday - 'Manticore Disapparates from Department of Magical Creature Experimentation - Ministry in an Uproar'. Why was it that it had to be this article in the Prophet that actually told the truth? Why did it have to be Malfoy and herself to have stumbled across that burning oak? Why did it have to be at this particular place in the sea of trees that the Manticore Apparated?

Forty metres.

Malfoy could hear Granger panting next to her. He chanced one look back at the Manticore -

CRACK!

It wasn't there anymore.

Malfoy turned back, and saw that the glowing blue seed, their Portkey, had somehow moved towards them. Feeling heartened, he sped up, feeling only a burning sensation in his lungs. Through the haze of the smoke, the Portkey shined enticingly. Malfoy's eyes were red and wet from the smoke. Through his blurry vision, he seemed to see two Portkeys instead of one.

Hermione paused. Too late did she register the full meaning of the newspaper headline. Disapparating Manticore? She looked up, and saw that the Portkey was still moving towards them. Quickly. Too quickly to be anything good. Too late did Hermione realize that the eyes of the Manticore just so happened to be the same vivid blue as their Portkey. Too late did she remember the Crack! that she had heard a moment ago. Too late did she put the puzzle pieces together.

'Malfoy! Stop! It's not a Portkey! It's the Man-'

Hermione closed her mouth abruptly, stunned at the thoughts that suddenly appeared in her head. Should she? Should she, really? This was Malfoy, who was spiteful and cruel and cold-hearted, able to be so accusatory yet so hypocritical in the same breath.

Thirty-five metres.

Malfoy shook his head. The Manticore? What was she on about? The Portkey was right there! Could it be ... Was she was lying? What if she wanted to hold him back? He had struck a nerve with her earlier. He had told her the truth about herself, and now she was repaying him. Granger the Great and Glorious Gryffindor: Saviour of the House Elves and the Madonna of the Underdogs, was trying to trick him into slowing down.

Thirty metres.

Malfoy lowered his head, and urged himself to run faster. He'd show her.

Twenty-five metres.

But Malfoy was still human, and there was still a little time. A little bit. Hermione could still warn him ... All she needed to do was make the choice: Open her mouth, flex the few little muscles in her throat, save him. She could still do it, if she wanted to ...

Twenty metres.

Malfoy stopped suddenly as the Manticore broke through the wall of smoke in front of him. It loomed above him, triumphant in its easy victory. Malfoy turned, stumbled. He saw the two violent flashing eyes, cruelly looking exactly like the Portkey. The mouth opened, displaying the three uneven rows of razor-sharp teeth. The Manticore seemed to grin wickedly. He was mocking Malfoy, it seemed. This savage, violent face, thrust out through the veil without warning in front of him, was worse than any nightmare Malfoy had ever had in his life. The smoke from the burning tree floated in coils around the Manticore's head like an ethereal bed of snakes. It swirled around the four legs of the creature. This was a monster rising from the very depths of hell.

But there was an image just as striking, a short distance away, behind the towering Manticore. This new, second image took the shape of a muddy, indescript girl in cheap, black robes. It was Granger. Malfoy could see the emotions running across her face at that moment: horror, shock, fear, indecision, and most of all, guilt. Her eyes locked onto Malfoy's for a moment, and then she closed them and walked away in the other direction.

Malfoy didn't have any more time to look at Granger, however. Without warning, the powerful, spiked tail of the Manticore whipped over in a wide arc. It was a complete blur as the stinger snapped towards Malfoy's head. Malfoy heard himself yell wildly, 'Granger! Help!' He fell backwards, his plea for help cut short. Lying on his back, feeling the cool earth between his fingers, he pointed his wand at the Manticore, poised to strike again.

With barely a pause, the tail swung around with unexpected grace and flexibility to try to pierce Draco again. As practised in class, he yelled, 'Protego!'

A blue light enveloped him in a type of barrier for one instant before the stinger struck it. The tail bounced harmlessly off the shield, causing the film-like barrier to dissipate into the air. Droplets of the poison scattered in the air, hissing whenever they hit the ground.

'Subseco!' Malfoy cried. The Manticore stumbled. A portion of its hind leg was severed.

'Impedimenta! Immobulus! Stupefy!' Malfoy yelled in quick succession. A red beam of light struck the Manticore directly in the face. It froze momentarily, with its eyes wide and its mouth agape, then flew back several metres.

It was all the time that Malfoy needed. Standing up, wincing, he began hobbling away from the immobilized Manticore. He was panting and sweating hard, as if he'd just run ten kilometres, instead of simply stumbling a few steps.

Malfoy looked around, and realized why guilt had been the predominant emotion on Granger's little face just then. She had deserted him! Hermione Granger. Why had she not done anything to help? She had left him to die. She wasn't supposed to! She was a Gryffindor. How could she? How dared she!

The fact jarred him: Granger had dared to desert him, after everything they'd gone through ... Malfoy felt anger surge through his body, mingling with his adrenaline. Ignoring the throbbing pain in his ankle, he began running. He wouldn't let her leave the forest after abandoning him like that.

* * * * *

Hermione froze when she heard the sound of Malfoy yelling. She took a few steps forward, and saw a terrible sight: the scorpion tail of the Manticore was thrusting forward, towards Malfoy's head. His mouth was open in another plea for help. His eyes did the same.

Hermione immediately began to regret everything she'd done - or hadn't done.

Relativity was a cruel concept indeed. For the brief moment their eyes connected, it felt as if his gaze bored deep into her, accusing her, worming into her. She didn't know if it was true, but it felt as if he knew that she had chosen to stay silent for those brief but so important moments. It lasted more than the second it should have. All Hermione could do was close her eyes and run. A second later, she wished she could close her ears as well as he yelled out her name in a last-ditch attempt.

She couldn't go forward - she just couldn't. She'd lost her wand in the encounter with the squid. If she ran to help Malfoy, while wandless, then she'd die, that was for sure.

Some said that to try, and to die trying, was the bravest and most honourable thing a person could do. The Spartans were to be carried home on their shields, but never without them. But Hermione wasn't like that. Hermione couldn't be like that. How could she risk her life in a hopeless escapade, for a person who was so ... hopelessly cruel? Painfully insensitive? Brutally honest? For the most part, their time together had been bearable. They'd even survived a squid attack together. However, all of that could not erase the memories of his stinging accusations, spoken less than thirty minutes ago, that struck too close to the mark. How he dared to compare her to him, or any other Slytherin, when she always did what was right and what was good ...

Between the two of them, it would always be Sink or Swim. A competition. Each of them looking for weaknesses in the other and exploiting them. And in this case, it was his life or hers.

She'd heard Malfoy's scream suddenly cut short, and perhaps that was what had made up her mind, finally. It was now too late to do anything. She didn't know what to feel as she stumbled in some random direction. Tears blinded her, and she found breathing to be more and more difficult. Her inaction - more than inaction: her choice to do nothing - had caused his death.

She had no good answer for her choice: no good explanation, no good rationalization, no good justification. The truth was, even she couldn't explain away how her inaction could ever be constituted as a good, right, and otherwise completely moral deed.

Rubbing her eyes, Hermione looked up, and found to her dismay that she had somehow ended up back at the burning oak. It was now listing dangerously to one side. One branch had already fallen to the ground, and flames had already spread from the branch to the dried leaves on the ground.

Hermione crouched down, and grabbed a small branch already set on fire, to use it as a torch. Everything she'd read about Manticores escaped her at the moment; all she could do was hope that it would be like other animals and flee from fire.

She got up, turned -

- only to find a wand pointed directly at her. Malfoy held it.

'Malfoy? You're alive?' She didn't know what to feel.

'You abandoned me.' His voice was steely, though his hand shook. His hair was streaked with soot, and his face was smudged with earth. A trickle of blood ran down his chin. Despite his barbaric appearance, he still stared down at her coldly. Hermione shivered inwardly at the sight, but tried to keep her voice calm. Any flicker of relief was quickly extinguished.

She heard herself pleading. 'No, I -'

'You abandoned me.'

'I had no wand. I couldn't have done anything.' It was the truth, wasn't it?

'Don't give me any of that bullshit, Granger.' Mafloy's eyes flashed.

Despite the alarm bells ringing in her ears, Hermione couldn't help bristling. 'Do you fancy yourself as Hercules? Would you have jumped into the fray, killing a monster with your bare hands? To save the life of another human being? For a mudblood, no less!'

'I said, no bullshit, Granger.'

'What would you have done? I reckon I can guess.'

'Shut up, Granger. I was dying, and you just closed your eyes and turned away.' Malfoy closed his eyes briefly.

Hermione felt another burst of anger as she saw his hurt. 'Hypocritical, aren't you? You'd never have done the same thing for me, and you know it. You think too much of yourself to expect me to do the same for you as I had earlier.' Or had he thought too much of her ...?

'Granger, I'm warning you ... You abandoned me.'

'Seeing everything that you've said and done, can you really say it was my fault?'

A quick spin of the wrist, and then Hermione ended up held against Malfoy's chest. She could feel his heart beating a tattoo all the way into her back. She dropped the flaming piece of wood. With one hand, Malfoy held Hermione's body, pressing it tightly against his. With the other, he gripped his wand tightly, and kept it pointed at Hermione's chest.

'Shut up, Granger. I'm warning you. Just -'

'No. Fine. Go ahead, then. Give me the good old Avada Kedavra while I'm wandless and trapped in your arms,' she lashed out at him. 'Say the words, Malfoy. You'll end up with your dad in jail anyway, so it won't matter if you fail your exam.' She stopped and coughed. She felt slightly faint. She rasped, 'They say the apple never falls far from the tree. Do you want to prove it to everyone? Is that what you want to do?'

A pause.

'Everyone already believes it anyway,' Malfoy responded stonily. Bitterly.

'Not everyone,' was all that Hermione dared to say in reply. It was true: she could never see Malfoy becoming his father, becoming the same, grim-faced type of man that she had faced in the Department of Mysteries last year. Malfoy had neither the experience, the inclination, the conviction, or, quite simply, the guts. She didn't know how this made her feel.

There was a long silence, where only the crackling of flames and the groaning of the tree prevailed. As the seconds stretched out longer and longer, Hermione felt more and more uncertain. She wondered if she could step on his feet or elbow him to escape. She stopped breathing, waiting for Malfoy to say the fatal words. There would be a green light, a whooshing sound, the sound of a heavy rainfall, of a resigned exhalation, and then -

Malfoy's arm pinning her to his body dropped. Hermione stumbled a few steps and exhaled, feeling much more relieved than she hoped she was displaying. She looked over at him, but he had turned away. His shoulders were rigid, and when he spoke, his voice was as stiff.

'I'm a Malfoy, but I'm not my - Get down!'

Without thinking, Hermione ducked down. There was a great whooshing sound, and then Hermione only saw a blur, the colour of blood. The Manticore leaped past her, aiming for the wizard holding the wand. It barrelled into Malfoy, propelling him face-first into the ground.

Malfoy heard a crack. A jolt of pain ran through him. But there was no time for that. He tried rolling over. The Manticore held him down with one foot, the claws digging into Malfoy's torso. The flashing blue eyes glittered in anticipation. The look of anger was frightening. The Manticore was used to winning all of its battles; it was not about to let these two puny beings win against it.

Malfoy opened his mouth to yell out a spell. He struggled to point his wand at the Manticore. 'Impedimenta!'

The Manticore grinned widely. It seemed to have anticipated the move: it took its other foot, and clamped down on Malfoy's wand-arm at the last second. The red beam missed the Manticore by a few centimetres.

It also barely missed hitting Hermione. She stood, watching the shapes in the smoke move blurrily. She had deserted Malfoy last time. Why couldn't she do it again? It would be so easy to just leave. Run for the Portkey. What was fifty metres? What was Malfoy? Who was Malfoy?

Malfoy lay on the ground, under the Manticore's feet. The claws dug into his skin. He found it hard to breathe. When he did, he heard a bubbling noise. He tried to move his wand-arm, but couldn't. He was pinned to the ground.

'Granger!' he yelled for help.

Suddenly, he saw the tail of the Manticore arch over again. Malfoy was struck by a deep feeling of conviction that he was about to die. Granger would not come back. She'd abandoned him the first time, and he'd scared her away with his threats. This second time, it was certain that she'd no longer worry that he'd live to take revenge. Granger was not going to help him.

This would be his very last memory, before his death, Malfoy was certain. He seemed to be able to see the world with a painful, sharp clarity - the acrid smell of burning wood was stronger than ever, the groaning of the listing oak tree sounded more pained than ever. Malfoy watched as the tail moved over the Manticore's back. Over the head. Down, down, towards Malfoy's chest. A stray drop of black poison burst out of the stinger, whipping against Malfoy's forearm.

The pain that immediately followed was intense as his robes and then his skin began to burn. Malfoy's skin bubbled as it was slowly eaten away by the caustic poison. The ichor welled up from the wound: a green, fetid mess. It soaked through his robes. The pain hurt more than the numb pain in his face and the throbbing pain in his stomach. It felt as if his arm had been torn open, then doused with sulphur. The pain spread throughout his whole body, from his arm. Gritting his teeth, Malfoy struggled to stay conscious.

Perhaps it was because of this excruciating pain that he didn't see quite clearly what happened next. All he was aware of was that at one moment, the stinger was mere centimetres away from his chest, and then, in the next, something was hurled at the Manticore. The Manticore roared, stepping back, stepping away from Malfoy.

Its fur was no longer the rusty colour of blood. Instead, it was a flickering orange and yellow - the colour of fire. The Manticore was on fire!

Through the waves of pain, Malfoy felt himself being dragged along the ground.

'Get up! Quick!'

Malfoy was lifted to his knees by his collar, but couldn't make it any further. His head lolled back. He stared unfocusedly at the scared face framed by wild brown hair in front of him.

'Granger? Why are you still here? You're supposed to be gone ... Why didn't you leave me?' he mumbled.

'Malfoy! Get up!' Hermione tried to pull harder, but Malfoy was a dead weight. A thin trail of blood snaked down the side of his face. She reached for his hand, slick and stained crimson.

'Go away, Granger. Then you can let me die like you wanted me to before ...'

'Get up! Malfoy!'

Out of the corner of Hermione's eye, she could see the Manticore extinguishing the last of the flames on its body. Looking even more determined and vicious, it began running towards Malfoy and Hermione.

'You just want to kill me again!'

'No, that's not true! I never wanted you dead!'

The Manticore leaped towards Hermione, still standing.

Hermione screamed, and losing her footing, fell to the ground, accidentally pulling Malfoy down with her. She thought she felt the whoosh of the Manticore's body over her own.

All this time, the burning oak tree that they were standing under had been teetering more and more on an angle. It was at this moment when it finally couldn't take anymore: it gave one final groan and then toppled over.

The teetering burning tower fell right on the Manticore. Sparks flew everywhere. The flames spread to the dry leaves on the ground. A hideous call of pain was heard. Then there was nothing, except the quiet crackling of fire.

Hermione stared at Draco, lying on the ground, unconscious. He looked a mess. There were huge gashes in his robes, and Hermione could see the glistening wounds underneath. A watery green fluid trickled down one arm. Blood ran down the side of his face, pooling in a puddle next to him. As well, his nose was broken. It had lost its proud, Malfoy tilt to become a misshapen bloody lump.

It stunned Hermione, seeing her Slytherin rival looking so vulnerable, so fragile, so beaten down. He could have been Harry, lying in a Hospital Wing bed, waiting to be healed. She then shook her head. It was only Draco. It was only Malfoy. She began walking the fifty metres back towards the Portkey as quickly as possible, to get help from Snape and St.-Marie. She couldn't move Draco because of his injuries, and he couldn't use a Portkey because he was unconscious.

It was relativity that made these fifty metres seem so much shorter than they already were. Before she realized it, she had already reached the glowing blue seed. As she plucked it from midair, and felt a hook yank her hard around her navel, she couldn't help but think one last time of Draco. Though relativity dealt with time, Hermione couldn't help but wonder: was it relativity that made her feel like she had shared something unique with the boy lying unconscious on the ground? Was it relativity that made her feel differently about him than she had before?

No. It was only Draco. It was only Malfoy. Of course not.